Вопросы ономастики (Jul 2018)
Systemic Ties of Personal Names through the Lens of Their Lexical Derivatives
Abstract
The present article explores the corpus of personal names as a system of “disembodied” anthroponyms of the Christian culture retaining all the connotations and associations they acquired within the linguistic and cultural system they belong to. Intrinsic linkages found between these names are verified through establishing systemic correlations between their derivatives. The latter are further classified, based on the type of the correlation between their elements, exemplified by Russian and French dialects’ material. All of the correlation mechanisms fall into two main groups: 1) linguistic correlations and 2) extralinguistic correlations. Linguistic correlations proceed from the language itself and include a) pairs of derivatives from the male and female variants of the same name, b) pairs created by the phonetic attraction (rhyme, alliteration, attraction to a common noun, and so on), c) consistent syntactic patterns with limited combinatory potential of the derivatives. Extralinguistic correlations are driven by interactions of the names or thus-named characters in the extralinguistic reality (culture, rituals, everyday life, and so on). There are two types of these correlations identified: a) calendar ones (the chronological proximity of the days dedicated to saints may provide for the approximation of their names derivatives) and b) text-based correlations. Hereby, a precedent text can be likewise represented by a specific work of literature or by a semiotically heterogeneous unity of basic texts (excerpts from the Holy Scripture, folklore texts, and so on), that exists within a culture and interacts with the rest of its elements.
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